LIFELONG LEARNING IN NEOLIBERAL JAPAN: Risk, Community, and Knowledge | By Akihiro Ogawa
Albany: SUNY Press, 2015. xv, 237 pp. (Illustrations.) US$80.00, cloth. ISBN 978-1-4384-5787-1.
In this thought-provoking book Akihiro Ogawa delves into the burgeoning realm of lifelong learning in Japan, with a particular focus on the state as one of its key sponsors. Building on his earlier groundbreaking study, The Failure of Civil Society (SUNY Press, 2009), Ogawa argues that “Japan’s neoliberal state has attempted to reorganize the public sphere by the generation of a new disciplined knowledge based on a strong lifelong learning initiative” (21). He situates the rise of lifelong learning in the context of concerns about risk and risk management, arguing that this style of learning is a response to both governmental and socioeconomic risk. For state officials, lifelong learning becomes a policy tool for counteracting risks by shifting responsibility from states to markets, public to private, and collectivities to individuals, while for individuals lifelong learning emerges as a complex space in which they negotiate processes of Beckian individualization inherent in Japan’s contemporary neoliberal reality. All of this Ogawa sets against the backdrop of discussions in Japan about the so-called “New Public Commons.” According to Ogawa, lifelong learning is often discussed in terms of how it might contribute to this new communal imaginary by producing “comprehensive knowledge” among proactive, problem-solving citizens who aim to reduce risk in the public sphere. As he notes, this problem solving is meant to happen in local communities where “people cooperate to govern aspects of their own lives” (19).
Ogawa presents us with a Japan far more complex than an all-powerful state effortlessly mobilizing docile individuals by structuring their thoughts and actions. On the contrary, we learn how, in neoliberal Japan, “knowledge constructing subjects” are not only “constrained against their will bydiscipline” but, more intriguingly, “how individuals create their own selves through discipline” (81). This approach gives the book relevance well beyond Ogawa’s focus on Japan.
In the six content chapters Ogawa investigates lifelong learning from the perspective of history, state policy, community schooling, social entrepreneurship training, and youth. Chapter 2 traces the historical emergence of lifelong learning through earlier phases of “social education” and “lifelong education.” While recognizing continuity over time, Ogawa wants to stress differences, which he does through an adroit analysis of key policy documents. The important difference Ogawa identifies in contrast to earlier programs of “education” is that in lifelong learning the emphasis has shifted to individuals “as agents of their own learning” (37–38). The historical continuity is the centrality of the local and local community, which appear to have been at the core of all three policy visions.
In chapter 3, Ogawa examines lifelong learning in the context of what he calls “risk management by a neoliberal state” (53). Through a fascinating investigation of the notion of “comprehensive learning” and the role of local communities in building the New Public Commons, Ogawa argues that the promotion of lifelong learning becomes a tool by which the state manages the risks of governance. As he notes, citizens “armed with this new knowledge” from lifelong learning are expected to “contribute spontaneously to activities like agenda setting and problem solving at the grassroots level and respond suitably to constantly changing social and political life” (54). Chapter 4 delves further into the idea of a New Public Commons but does so through the lens of a rooted ethnography. Ogawa immerses us into the world of bunka borantia, or “cultural volunteers,” who work in local public facilities offering lifelong learning opportunities. He suggests that these volunteers are adept in applying a kind of “civic knowledge” (shimin chi) which not only helps them deal with constant change in daily life but also contributes to the formation of the New Public Commons (74). Through state-initiated processes such as jukugi (due deliberation), Ogawa confirms the shaping role on civil society of Japan’s interventionist state, but he also stresses how such processes create “a certain kind of disciplinary subject” who potentially produces “positive solutions” for social change (96). The tension between structure and agency Ogawa identifies here is deeply thought provoking.
Chapter 5 takes us into the realm of community schools, a relatively new, still somewhat rare, but increasing component of Japan’s educational landscape. Overall, Ogawa is largely supportive of these schools, which are a direct result of the neoliberal turn in Japan. As he explains, “shifting control of schools from the government to local communities” opens up the possibility of local mutual assistance and perhaps the evolution of an educational system more able to incorporate the diverse needs of individuals and communities. On the one hand, these community schools are tools for the state to mitigate “governmental risk” through a form of retrenchment. But for individual children, the schools become an important portal for communication with the local community and local people. Through this communication, Ogawa argues, children “learn how to survive in this difficult and complicated neoliberal world” (115).
In chapters 6 and 7 Ogawa turns to lifelong education in the context of socioeconomic risk, utilizing Beck’s notion of individualization. Chapter 6 traces the experience of a group of ten unemployed men as they study in a state-funded course on social entrepreneurship. In effect, the state is asking these vulnerable individuals to “voluntarily take risks” despite their precarious socioeconomic situation. Although some of the class members do eventually become involved in third-sector activities, the majority do not. Ogawa is quite critical of the initiative, saying that “rather than being asked to take risks,” what they really needed was “real vocational training that would help them secure jobs and earn money for a living” (138). The reality was that they were in no position to take the risks associated with social entrepreneurship (138).
Building on this theme of responses to precarity, in chapter 7 Ogawa traces the emergence and benefits of career education for youth. Different to training in social entrepreneurship, Ogawa is more upbeat about the value of career education. As a phenomenon that emerged in response to the mounting pressures on youth to manage risks in a neoliberal world, Ogawa argues that career education has the capacity to “promote the social inclusion of youth” and become a “foundation for developing the citizenry of contemporary Japan” (149). At the same time, while career education can empower individuals and possibly strengthen civil society, Ogawa also reminds us that it is, ironically enough, “a strategy crafted by the neoliberal state to develop certain types of required human resources for its own benefit” (166).
In sum, Lifelong Learning in Neoliberal Japan is a thoroughly engrossing and, at times, unsettling account of one critical apparatus of neoliberalism in contemporary Japan. The tension Ogawa identifies between empowerment and constraint in lifelong learning offers a powerful insight into how some Japanese are trying to survive, to pursue autonomy, and to construct genuine community in a neoliberal world. The book will be essential reading for anyone interested in neoliberal politics, risk and risk management, state-civil society relations, precarity, and the challenges of life in contemporary Japan.
Simon Avenell
Australian National University, Canberra, Australia
Australian National University, Canberra, Australia
pp. 582-584
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